274 NARRATIVE OF THE EXPEDITION. 



a few miles of these intricacies, we found a brisk and full tributary, 

 below which, the descent is at once free, and on crossing the 

 first narrow geologic plateau, the rapids begin ; the stream being 

 constantly and often suddenly enlarged, by springs and tribu- 

 taries from the right and left. To describe the descent of this 

 stream, in detail, would require graphic powers to which I do not 

 aspire, and time which I cannot command. "We were two days 

 and a part of a night in making the descent, with every appliance 

 of voyageur craft. It was after darkness had cast her pall over 

 us, on the evening of the 4th of August, before we reached still 

 water. The river is then a deep and broad mass of water, into 

 which coasting vessels from the Lake might enter. Some four 

 miles from the foot of the last rapids, it enters the Fond du Lac 

 of Lake Superior. Some time before reaching this point, we had 

 been apprised of our contiguity to it, from hearing the monotonous 

 thump of the Indian drum ; and we were glad, on our arrival, 

 to find the chief, Mongazid,* of Fond du Lac, with the military 

 barge of Lieut. Allen, left at that place on our outward trip, 

 which he had promised to bring down to this point. 



Having thus accomplished the objects committed to my trust, 

 and rejoined the track described in my prior narrative, I rested 

 here on the next day (5th), being the Sabbath ; and then pro- 

 ceeded through Lake Superior, to my starting-point at Sault de 

 Ste Marie.f 



* From mong, a loon, and ozid, his foot. The name is in allusion to the track of 

 the bird on the sand. 



f On passing through Lake Superior, I learned from an Indian the first breaking 

 out of Asiatic cholera in the country, in 1832, and the wide alarm it had produced. 



